The present invention disclosed herein relates to an optical amplifier.
Much research has been conducted on various network structures and network switches to transmit large amounts of data at high rates in our current high-speed internet and multimedia service environment. Currently, fiber to the home (FTTH) technology is being developed in many countries to realize high-speed transmission of large quantities of data through optical fiber connections between telephone companies and homes. For this end, many types of optical networks are being studied, and resultantly, much R&D is currently focused on various optical network devices.
Unlike other optical amplifiers, semiconductor optical amplifiers are fabricated based on semiconductor technology, enabling semiconductor optical amplifiers to be integrated with existing semiconductor optical devices, while being small-sized with non-linear characteristics. Therefore, not only can semiconductor optical amplifiers be used as optical amplifiers, but they can also be used as photonic switches, optical add/drop devices, wavelength converters, and the like.